Solving a skills shortage when time has run out
Available for work: catering staff in abundance. NVQ certificates. Classically trained. Can start immediately. Sounds good? Just one drawback. They've all got criminal records. All of a sudden, the prospect is less appealing. Faced with the choice of hiring an ex-convict or a conventional candidate, most employers would understandably opt for the latter. At face value that person is less likely to cause concern and create hassle than someone who has had a spell inside.
But it could be time to challenge that thinking. That skills shortage we hear so much about is not getting any better. In fact it is getting worse, according to the Hospitality Training Foundation's (HTF) annual skills and employment forecast released last week. The HTF suggests that one potential source of employees could be former prisoners who have completed NVQs in catering and are keen to get a job in hospitality once released.
The suggestion is not as mad as it first appears. Not all ex-prisoners are dangerous potential re-offenders. Convicted rapists and murderers and those on long-term sentences of four years or more account for only 15% of the total prison population (some 70,000 across the UK). The vast majority of prisoners are in for lesser crimes, undergo some kind of vocational training while inside and, with support from the probation service, or social services in Scotland, are candidates for rehabilitation into the workplace once discharged.
But it's not as straightforward as offsetting a deficit of labour with a ready-made surplus. Employers willing to consider the prison population will have to make efforts of their own if they are to reap the benefits of this sector. They will want to know the background of ex-prisoners just as they would want to know the employment history of any candidate. But ex-prisoners are entitled to protection and this information is not always readily available. So employers need to approach and work with the prison service to get to know prisoners before they are released. Only then will they be in full possession of the facts. They may reasonably decide, for example, that a convicted thief might not be best suited to a situation where money constantly changes hands.
Those who are taken on need to be immersed as soon as possible into the culture of an organisation. Good employers will have a culture of honesty whereby lying and stealing are never acceptable and this needs to be communicated to all employees regardless of their background. Those doing the hiring should also be prepared to provide feedback to the prisons officers responsible for the training so they can review what is being offered on the inside. Otherwise all the effort that goes in to preparing prisoners for life on the outside will have been wasted.
And maybe, just maybe, these new recruits will turn out to be a credit to the organisation. A prisoner correspondent to Caterer's Letter Pages earlier this year who was a catering student whilst inside made an impassioned plea to employers. "I know I have done wrong," he wrote, "but I really want to better myself, be a credit to society and put the past behind me."
Good luck to him.
Jenny Webster, Deputy editor, Caterer & Hotelkeeper
